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Note to Pope Francis: We need a wall because we’re nice to people

This insight from Babalu Blog got me thinking about things that bug Pope Francis and things that apparently do not (thanks to Instapundit):

“Cubans recognise this Pope perfectly: he is the same man who refused to receive the“Ladies in White” and who failed to condemn the circumstances under which people languish on the island. He is the same Francis who forgets about these victims, but is quick to pardon those who wronged them.”

A little background info: The Ladies in White are some wives, daughters, sisters of Castro’s political prisoners, who were rounded up and detained by the police prior to Pope Francis’ visit to Cuba last fall. I presume so that they couldn’t embarrass the regime.

It was inevitable, I suppose, being as political prisoners and communist police states go together like Mausers and barbed wire. The trouble is when you lock people away without due process, their family members tend to become a nuisance. Such that would pose a bit of a, shall we say, maintenance issue when people like the Pope come to town.

But it isn’t the Castro dictators that I’m wondering about. That shipped sailed long ago. It just got me wondering about the Pope’s willingness to play along. Because by all accounts it was a pleasant dissident-free visit, Pope Francis and the Castros maintained their cordial relationship, and no scolds were in order — at least not for the Castro brothers.

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not in the Gospel.”

That remark, of course, was regarding the United States building a wall on it’s southern border. It seems that’s what bugs the Pope, not that the pesky wives of innocent people rotting in the Cuban gulag are kept out of his sight.

I mean here we have someone who’s not disposed to criticize a regime that has to lock its citizens in because they’re clamoring to escape its cruelty, but he is disposed to criticize us for locking non-citizens out who are clamoring to partake of our kindness.

It’s actually an old story, happens all the time. It’s almost as if pointing out the supposed shortcomings of a free society provides some kind of weeny-salve for the consciences of those who don’t speak up for the voiceless while they buddy up with their oppressors.

I mean, besides the obvious hypocrisy of the pope’s wall comments, I am just amazed that someone of such stature doesn’t possess the insight level to get that we need the wall because we’re nice to people, unlike the Castros.

And yet, inexplicably, he reserves all the papal finger-wagging for us.

History will tell the tale. History is invigorated by the soul-stirring memories of those who weren’t afraid to be pelted with rotten tomatoes — or worse — by puffed-up moral arbiters on the sidelines as they stared down the Castros of their time.

Sadly, while Pope Francis can be satisfied that he left Cuba with his clothes pristine and tomato-free, it just means that he will not be remembered.